Xtium provisions
Tier-1 Apps and Virtual
Desktops 30 times faster
with Dell EqualLogic and
VMware vSphere 4.1
• Virtual Hosting And Recovery
• Cloud Backup/Recovery/Archiving
• Flexible Computing
• Virtualization
“Customers are
enjoying new
services that are
making them
more efficient and
providing new
opportunities for
revenue.”
Tim Vogel, Chief Technology
Officer, Xtium LLC
Customer Profile
Company: Xtium LLC
Industry: Hosting Solutions
Benefits
Country: United States
Employees: < 100
Web: www.xtium.com
• 30x faster provisioning of clones
for SAP test drive environments (2
minutes vs. 1 hour)
• 5x faster copies using Xcopy for
single instances of SAP test drives
and virtual desktops
• 75% reduction of CPU utilization
and 95% reduction in SAN network
traffic for copy process using Xcopy
• 90% savings of disk space using thin
clones
• 70% more hosted virtual machines
(VMs) on fewer physical resources
with atomic locking
• 50% fewer volumes to manage
• 72% less time to VMotion VMs
between physical servers
• 76% less time to boot multiple
virtual desktops, improving
customer service
Business Need
Xtium needed to deliver SAP “test drive” environments complete with
Microsoft SQL Server databases to enable SAP customers to try and
buy software, while meeting SaaS expectation of swift installation and
delivery. To meet SAP’s requirements, it needed to fully provision these
customers within 24 hours.
Solution
Xtium upgraded to Dell™ EqualLogic Firmware 5.0 to enable the use of
thin clones—thin-provisioned, writeable copies of data volumes—and
leverage direct integration with their VMware vSphere 4.1 environment
with vStorage APIs. The company is now able to make copies of golden
images for SAP customers as well as for virtual desktop infrastructure
(VDI) project with unprecedented speed and efficiency, using optimized
disk space.
Business opportunities for cloud providers are paving the
way for new services to customers that go beyond cost
savings and set the bar higher for speed and convenience
in delivery of IT services.
“As we increase each
customer storage
profile with more
and more storage,
we’re just adding
building blocks.
The Dell EqualLogic
platform scales easily
without ripping and
replacing.”
Tim Vogel, Chief Technology
Officer, Xtium LLC
A case in point is Xtium, an
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
provider with private cloud, virtual
hosting and disaster recovery
offerings. With operations centers in
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and Las
Vegas, Nevada, Xtium’s services feature
“10x the service at 1/3 legacy costs,
100 percent recovery and 99.999
percent availability.”
Enterprise software giant SAP
approached Xtium with a specific
challenge: it wanted to be able to
provide “test drive” environments
complete with Microsoft SQL
Server databases quickly and
inexpensively, so that prospective
customers could experience an
instance of their own to test SAP
software for 30, 60 or 90 days, prior to
making the deployment commitment.
“This was a departure from the
old model of enterprise software
engagements, where you had three
months to provision hardware and
install the software and databases
on top of it,” says Tim Vogel, CTO of
Xtium. “SAP wanted to be able to tell
customers ‘You can have it tomorrow.’”
Providing Robust Services With
Lean Focused Staff
Xtium succeeded in filling SAP’s and
its customers’ requirements and
now is one of the select handful of
certified VMware, SAP and Microsoft
hosting providers. In an industry in
which companies are often reluctant
to virtualize business-critical
applications, Xtium offers a virtualized
SAP production hosting offering with
aggressive SLAs because it is confident
in the Dell and VMware infrastructure
used to support their offering.
In fact, Xtium has built its business
on VMware and Dell EqualLogic
virtualized iSCSI SANs. An early adopter
of virtualization, Xtium chose VMware
because of its market acceptance
and its robust set of tools for fast
implementation and maintenance.
As the next generation IT disaster
recovery solution provider, Xtium
replicates customers’ environments
exactly as they are. “If the customer
wants their environment back for any
reason, we can just hand it back as
VMDKs,” says Vogel.
The Dell EqualLogic platform for
enterprise performance and scalability
was also an easy choice.
“We wanted to provide a platform that
we could easily support with lean,
expertly focused staff and still provide
the very robust services that you would
find in a high-end environment—and
Technology at Work
Hardware
Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS6000E,
PS5500E, PS5000X, PS5000XV
iSCSI SANs
Dell PowerEdge™ R610 servers
with Intel® Xeon® processors 5500
series
Software
Microsoft® SQL Server® database
(64-bit Standard)
SAP CRM 7.0
VMware® vSphere 4.1
VMware View
Windows Server® 2008R2
provide it cost effectively,” says Vogel.
“As we build from each customer
storage footprint to one with more
and more storage, we’re just adding
building blocks. The Dell EqualLogic
platform is a perfect fit. It provides very
high-scale functionality that we’re very
pleased with. It scales easily without
ripping and replacing.”
New Firmware Delivers Enhanced
Integration
Xtium has more than 18 Dell EqualLogic
arrays, including Dell EqualLogic
PS6000E, PS5500E, PS5000X,
PS5000XV and some older models. The
company also uses Dell PowerEdge
R610 servers with Intel Xeon
processors 5500 series as VMware
ESX hosts.
More recently, Xtium has taken
advantage of the Dell EqualLogic
Firmware 5.0 with enhanced support
for the VMware vStorage API. The
result of more than two years of
collaboration between Dell EqualLogic
and VMware engineers, the new
firmware delivers powerful integration
and new features that help companies
differentiate their services while
streamlining infrastructure and making
IT personnel more effective.
To provide SAP with its test drive
environments, Xtium took full
advantage of the support that Dell
EqualLogic Firmware 5.0 provides
for the VMware Xcopy API as well as
Dell’s thin clone capability in the new
firmware. The company also uses
the same enhancements in
their hosted virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) offering, which
customers use to increase access and
as a disaster contingency.
30x Faster Provisioning Of Test
Drive Environments
“For projects like virtual desktops and
the SAP test drives which copy a single
golden image, the EqualLogic thin
clone technology is powerful,” says
Vogel. “It provides 30 times faster
cloning capability without requiring
extra disk space for anything but
incremental changes to the clones.
The Xcopy API functionality is a huge
benefit when we need to clone one-off
virtual machines to bring up additional
environments for customers. Not only
does it offload the task from the server
to the storage and thus reduce the
stress on the server, it also performs the
task much faster because it’s copying
directly from the storage. We’re super
happy with both of the new additions.”
“We’re seeing about a five-to-one
benefit on Xcopy in speed with the
new Dell EqualLogic firmware,” Vogel
continues. “The CPU utilization for the
copy process is reduced by 75 percent,
and SAN network traffic is reduced by
95 percent. In addition, we’re going
from an hour to make a full copy of
an environment, down to literally two
minutes to make a thin clone for an
SAP test drive or VDI instance. We
can do full provisioning of a test drive
environment 97 percent faster than we
could have previously. And with the
thin clones, we use much less disk for
the test drives—50 gigabytes versus
500 gigabytes, saving 90 percent of our
disk space.”
Xtium is also making good use of
the Dell Multipath Extension Module
(MEM) for VMware vSphere 4.1, which
provides multiple redundant network
connections to Dell EqualLogic iSCSI
arrays and introduces additional
“For projects
including virtual
desktop delivery
and the SAP test
drives which copy a
single golden image,
the EqualLogic
thin clones are
wonderful.”
Tim Vogel, Chief Technology
Officer, Xtium LLC
advanced capabilities such as
automatic connection load-balancing
without any additional configuration.
Ratcheting Up Profits
Atomic locking in the EqualLogic 5.0
Firmware is another important feature
for Xtium. “Traditionally, locking issues
made us concerned about the number
of VMs we are putting on any one
LUN,” says Vogel. “Atomic locking in
the new firmware reduces locking
overhead by more than 76 percent, so
we’re much less concerned. We can
put more hosted VMs on fewer physical
resources and realize more profit,
while reducing the number of volumes
to manage.”
Improved scaling with Virtual Machine
File System (VMFS) configuration also
makes it possible to put more VMs on
a VMFS volume. “In some cases, we’ve
been able to scale from 10 or 12 VMs
per VMFS volume up to as many as
64 VMs per VMFS volume to more
effectively leverage the host cost
profile,” says Vogel.
VMotion is a critical feature of VMware
for Xtium, since it enables the managed
hosting provider to move virtual servers
between physical machines without
interrupting users when performing
maintenance. “With the new firmware’s
enhanced integration with VMware
vStorage APIs, moving a server using
VMotion takes 72 percent less time,”
says Vogel.
In addition, the time it takes to boot
multiple desktops in a VDI is reduced
by 76 percent, according to Vogel, so
management of virtual desktops also
takes less time.
Achieving Dynamic Growth
Xtium is benefiting from the automatic
load balancing features of Dell
EqualLogic storage, especially for
its VDI and SAP test drives. “It’s very
valuable to be able to have the data
that’s needed frequently on the very
fast SAS disk and the least-recently
used data on less-expensive SATA
disk,” says Vogel. “Having the selfmanagement between the two tiers is a
big benefit to us.”
The new enhancements to the
EqualLogic firmware come at no extra
charge to Xtium, and the company has
been happy to take advantage of the
built-in software features that
Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SANs have
always provided.
Thin provisioning of storage volumes,
for example, has been available in the
EqualLogic feature package for years,
although thin clones are a new feature.
“We use just-in-time provisioning
to defer capital expenditures for
customers avoiding over-provisioning
storage to customers; by closely
monitoring usage we can add storage
capacity only when it’s truly needed,”
says Vogel. “Growth events are only
metered as customers cross thresholds
without anyone having to buy all the
storage upfront on a just-in-case basis.”
The combination of the new
technologies is allowing Xtium to
deliver new and enhanced services.
“Customers are enjoying services
that are making them more efficient
and providing new opportunities for
revenue,” says Vogel. “And the new
Dell EqualLogic firmware enables us to
grow dynamically, so it’s a win-win.”
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WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. Reference number: 10008801